Thursday, October 03, 2019

Jobs to do, time to do them.

Because of our concern about the risk of diesel bug because of  the fuel tank being half empty (the bug thrives at the point where diesel oil meets the water it's floating on, and water arrives in the tank as condensation forming on the cold sides) - and because of an irrational need to finish fitting the stern gland greaser - and wanting to sweep the chimney so that I can be confident of it not being a problem when we next light the stove in a wintry hurry - and needing to spin the boat around simply because we didn't do it at the start of summer when we should have done (it's good practice to ensure that the sun doesn't fall predominantly on one side of a boat, so that the paint fades pretty equally over time), we came back to Kantara yesterday.


It was rather cold on board. 8°C when we arrived, but up to 23° within a few hours of  lighting the stove. Then it was a massive 16° when we awoke this morning, quickly pushed up to a more comfortable level by our trusty Alde.

The temperature was no surprise to us. What did astonish us was the plague of flies! Houseflies. Okay, the Egyptians had it worse, but we did away with two dozen or more of the things yesterday. They came out of the folds of our six Roman blinds when we lowered them in the evening. I literally sucked most of them up with the vacuum cleaner. Those that missed that treatment got swatted. Their reflexes seemed to be impaired. Why they were there and how long they'd been there we have no idea. I squashed the last two as I was going to bed, and we've seen none today. Very strange!

The wind yesterday had been rather too strong to move the boat, but the weather forecast suggested that today, Thursday, it would be better. We'd do it then, we said. So I fitted the greaser with Heath Robinson flair, forgot to clean the chimney, and then kicked myself when...

...today we filled both fuel tanks as planned, and returned to our berth, backing in to point the port side to the sun. The chimney is now on the water side and I won't be risking sweeping it, lest I fall in in the process. [Three hours after writing that, I took the risk and did the job without getting the slightest bit wet. I also remembered that I had intended to Hammerite the rusting edges of the stern hatch, and did that, too. Now I'm feeling dead chuffed!]

To round off our busyness, we found the ideal solution to the loss of 56lb of ballast from the front, right-hand (forward starboard 😁 ) side of the boat when we removed the safe from there. It was easy, really. We moved the anchor from the forward port (front left 😜 ) hold to one on the other side where we've been storing paints and varnishes. The combined 16kg weight of the anchor and the 7kg of the chain, added to the effect of taking that weight away from the port side, will give us just the trim we needed to correct the bit of a list to port we've had for a long time.
Now all we need to do is get out there and test it!

PS - It's Friday morning and I just killed another flipping fly!!